Pay Me, Bug!

Chapter 03

WHEREIN Our Hero, Axe in Hand, Discovers the Forest Brought Guns. Many, Many Guns.

Centurion's flight deck was immense.

As Grif stepped off the lift, onto the smooth alloyed floor, he didn't feel like he was on a ship; he felt like he was underground. The few times the Fool's Errand had berthed in an enclosed space, the facility had been underground, and Centurion's flight deck clearly borrowed from this design. The walls were a series of octagonal tiles -- in an underground facility they would have been wedged into the surrounding rock itself. The ceiling, which cleared the top of Grif's ship with at least twenty meters to spare, housed long strips of lights to provide general lighting, and track-mounted lights to provide greater illumination where necessary.

It wasn't the first time Grif had been on this ship, and the initial feeling of disorientation passed, replaced with all the sights and sounds of a starship: the metallic taste of air pumped through recycling filters, the low hum of the gravity induction field, and the faint sheen of light reflecting off the Maxwells as they kept the atmosphere on one side of the launch port and the vacuum of space on the other.

A crisply spoken command drew his attention from the ship toward the two squads of heavily armed Radiant Throne Marines, and he was again reminded how very easy it was to be distracted from impressive feats of engineering.

Commodore Mavis stood behind the marines, staring at Grif intently. Grif waited patiently, adopting an air of casual disregard as a contingent of marines broke away from the main group, surrounded Grif and his crew, and marched them toward Mavis.

"Captain Vindh." Mavis was all business -- whatever he was feeling, he didn't allow it to creep into his voice.

"Commodore," Grif answered.

"I am required, at this point, to ask for your cargo manifest."

Grif slowly lowered his right hand, revealing a small data chip. Mavis nodded to one of his officers, who retrieved the data chip, placed it in a reader, and handed it to the Commodore.

"Thank you, Captain," Mavis said. Then, turning back to the same officer: "search them for weapons."

The officer barked out an order and marines advanced on the crew, separating each and searching them thoroughly... but not excessively, Grif had to admit. They were completely professional about the job.

"Farming equipment?" Mavis looked up from the reader in surprise. "You're transporting farming equipment?"

Grif shrugged as best he could with his hands still raised above his head. "There's a market for it," he said. "And Varkav's equipment is almost as good as what you can get from Tyrelos. At half the price."

"I see." Mavis sounded unconvinced. "According to this manifest, you paid all cargo duties promptly and without complaint."

"That's because this is legitimate cargo," Grif said.

"It would seem to be..." Mavis nodded to another officer, who immediately ordered his men onto the lift and into the Fool's Errand. "And yet when one of our corsair's hailed you, you ran."

"Force of habit."

"They apparently intercepted onboard communications between you and one of your gunners concerning the best way to cripple them," Mavis continued.

"No, that's just a big misunderstanding," Grif said. "See, what happened was--"

"They're clean." The officer who supervised the search of the crew interrupted Grif in mid-sentence. "No weapons of any kind."